


Inherit the Earth

by ceedeeandco (Scedasticity)



Series: Inherit the Earth [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Supernatural AU: Croatoan/End'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/ceedeeandco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about monsters is they are meant to live in a world <i>with humans</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally based on this prompt: _2014 with a wrinkle: Eve walks the Earth, and her monsters run in packs with (or hunting) the croatoans._
> 
> I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but the backstory -- backmythos? -- I'm using for Eve is the same as what I covered in [Creation Myth](http://archiveofourown.org/works/617384/chapters/1113722).

Initially, many vampires eschewed feeding off infected humans on purely aesthetic grounds. They were kind of disgusting, and blood-borne diseases could cause indigestion. Also, some of the younger vampires remained convinced that the infected were in fact zombies, and therefore technically dead, and therefore inedible.

As the epidemic spread, it began to get inconvenient. There were fewer uninfected humans, _and_ they were getting more paranoid. Practically speaking, it was time to risk a little indigestion.

For a while, no one heard anything about the results.

Eventually, rumors spread about a nest in Ohio where some of the younger vampires had been _so insistent_ that the infected were actually zombies that some of the older ones agreed to test it out first, so over half the nest had just been watching when a few of them bit in. It hadn't been dead man's blood; they weren't immobilized. Instead, they retched and spasmed and were incapacitated without being immobilized, and were mostly torn to pieces by the infected humans. The vampires who'd been watching got some of them safely away, but they were delirious and sick for almost a week. Not everyone believed the story at first, but most believed it enough not to have the entire nest feeding on the infected at once. More narrow escapes and tales of illness and death followed. Those who did not take precautions were presumed torn apart.

Infected humans were now off the menu. Unfortunately, uninfected humans were becoming sparse. Starvation doesn't outright kill vampires, but it does make them weak and reckless enough to attack things they shouldn't, which has about the same effect. Humans called it the Croatoan virus (when they weren't calling it the zombie apocalypse); vampires called it the Croatoan Famine.

 

When the Alpha Vampire comes back, the first thing he does is make vampires stop killing each other over the remaining uninfected humans; the second thing he does is make them stop killing the uninfected humans. Blood is a renewable resource _if you don't kill the humans_. They have to be smart about this.

The third thing he does is appeal to Mother for her personal help.

* * *

Most werewolves, most of the time, live as humans; a few nights a month they run around hunting for hearts, and many of them don't even know why they wake up with the headache from Purgatory. As the Apocalypse spread, they feared with the humans, suffered with the humans, and often died with the humans -- no infected and very few demons were armed with silver, but decapitation or incineration will kill almost anything. Living as humans, werewolves were exposed to the Croatoan virus and -- unlike most monsters -- developed the usual symptoms, only for the virus to vanish when they transformed at the full moon. If they infected others in the interim, there was about a fifty-fifty chance of the infectee becoming a werewolf as well.

The cycle of infection and recovery was violently traumatic, especially as memories-as-infected were retained far more than memories-as-werewolf. Many of the ignorant werewolves tried to kill themselves but didn't know how to make it stick.

 

The Alpha Werewolf moves quickly to explain to her bewildered children what they are, and makes an effort to enable all of them to remember their transformations. Letting them be one creature, of one mind (if two forms) for the whole month alleviates the worst of the confusion. It doesn't fix the trauma and does nothing for the inconvenience factor: even the most feral of werewolves likes to be able to get some new clothes or a bottle of liquor occasionally, and Croatoan-filled hearts taste _foul_.

* * *

Many skinwalkers lived as humans, and their lives fell apart when the humans' did. (Many skinwalkers lived _among_ humans and were inconvenienced and somewhat offended when the human communities they inhabited evacuated and the evacuations refused to take pets.) They had to fend for themselves in a hostile environment many of them really were not suited to. Dogs are not wolves. Their natural habitat is _with humans_ , and sometimes-human skinwalkers are no happier about living wild.

Unlike werewolves, skinwalkers never develop Croatoan symptoms, even for a little while, and unlike vampires, skinwalkers can ingest flesh or blood infected with the virus without ill effect (beyond indigestion and bad breath). But they don't have the superhuman strength to get away when attacked, and so are much more likely to be outright dismembered.

 

The Alpha Skinwalker tries to get things organized -- if humans can't make the world habitable, they'll have to take up the slack. It's just hard to get anything done with demons and infected and disasters in every direction. The humans say this is the Apocalypse, the end of the world, and there's talk of angels leaving Earth to its doom. Then, skinwalkers have never trusted in angels.

* * *

Shapeshifters are not a social species. In fact, they're more of an antisocial species, who frequently can't be bothered to check up on their own offspring, leaving them behind like cuckoo eggs and moving on. The offspring are then raised by humans, if they're lucky and happen to be with humans who don't freak out when they start shifting, or abandoned. Shifters are tough. Most of those abandoned survive, and grow up to be bitter, badly socialized, emotionally unbalanced adults who've had to discover what they are on their own. (There are some family lines of shapeshifters which make a point of rearing their own offspring; a few of them even advocate raising the child with the human parent.)

As the pandemic hit and the crowds of humans thinned, being alone in the crowd got more difficult. Shapeshifters were immune to the virus, of course, but if they assumed the form of an infected, the mental link tended to be overwhelming and they would then _act_ like an infected. Some of the more disturbed shapeshifters decided this was a good idea, and off they went. Most of the others couldn't work out what to do.

Shapeshifters don't need humans to live, but they need them to reproduce.

* * *

The blood, unsurprisingly, is the most contaminated by the virus. Vetala aren't as incapacitated as vampires, and they can _survive_ off Croatoan blood, but it still makes them sick.

Wraiths suffer no immediate ill effect from feeding on the infected, but if they drain too much fluid over a period of time, they start developing fevers.

Fresh Croatoan-infected pituitary glands aren't much worse than two-day-old uninfected pituitary glands -- they're adequate. Mostly. Kitsune tend to mention this as a secondary concern; they eat humans, but they also live among them, and they don't like the collapse of civilization any more than anybody else does.

Arachne technically have no biological problem eating the infected, but practically speaking they're mostly distracted by unexpected volcanoes in the eastern Mediterranean.

Ghouls have no problem eating the bodies of infected humans, and even claim not to mind the taste (although they have been overheard commenting about rotten eggs). With corpses everywhere they have a plentiful food supply. They have always lived unnoticed around the fringes of humanity, and keep it up with little difficulty. One might think they have no reason to complain. As it turns out, ghouls are better long-term planners than one might expect. They are quick to point out the current course will lead to _no humans_ , and that includes infected humans, because it's not like they reproduce. And that will be a problem.

Rugaru are just as bad at long-term planning as one might expect, and furthermore full rugaru lack the mental capacity to notice anything unusual is happening, and non-full rugaru tend to be preoccupied.

Wendigoes are great at long-term planning, and not a few of them get jerked out of hibernation to very unpleasant surprises.

* * *

Djinn can't get much from the infected, just some nasty-tasting blood if they put the effort in to hold them down, since they're un-entranceable.

Sirens can't get much from the infected -- rage and violence, fine, but their usual hooks are useless.

Changelings can't get anything at all from the infected.

* * *

Before the ritual, the dragons actually have concerns about _finding enough virgins_.

* * *

Mother comes forth from Purgatory, newly embodied, and stands with the dragons on a crumbling ledge that will not hold up much longer under the forced seismic activity. Had they left it any longer, they would have needed to find a different portal. She closes her eyes for a moment, and listens.

"My poor children," she says. "But I'm here now. We will make this right."


	2. Chapter 2

Ten seconds after Jeff fires the last of their ammunition into the croats at the bottom of the escalator, three huge dogs crash through what's left of the glass wall. Another bound has them at the edge of the crowd, and then it's all teeth and blood and the croats slowly realizing there's something alive behind them that maybe they should look into.

That would be strange enough, but then _more_ dogs pile in, not nearly so big, but still plenty dangerous. Jeff glimpses what looks like a blood-smeared Golden Retriever leaping onto a man's back, but that's not as strange as the croat going down under a Chihuahua and a Yorkie.

"What the hell?" Sharon mutters.

"Zombie dogs?" Jeff offers -- he knows his _Resident Evil_.

They really ought to be trying to find a way through the collapsed ceiling, find another way out, but Sharon has a twisted ankle and Jill needs a tetanus shot and the kids are exhausted and Jeff, Jeff has croat blood on him and he's on borrowed time. He'd meant to save a bullet for himself. He'd meant to save bullets for all of them, now that they were cornered.

On the floor below, one of the big dogs rips open a croat's chest and plunges its muzzle in, emerging a moment later with something it swallows down in one gulp. The Chihuahua and Yorkie are playing tug-of-war with something dark and bloody that rips between them.

"What's happening?" Jill says.

"Fuck if I know," Sharon replied, saving Jeff the necessity.

A Collie extricates itself from the middle of the killing field, delicately licking blood off its muzzle, and trots to the foot of the escalator. It pauses and looks over its shoulder, and it's joined by a bulldog and some small breed Jeff can't identify.

Sharon reflexively raises her gun when they start up, but she's all out of ammo, too.

Halfway up, the Collie gives a shake, and suddenly instead of a dog there's a naked woman climbing the escalator. She's lean and rawboned and not pretty, but her hair's the same reddish-brown as her coat was -- oh, god, this is insane -- and in another life Jeff might have bought her a drink.

"Holy shit," Sharon says.

The woman wipes her bloody hand on her flank, then tries to scrub the blood away from her mouth with her slightly-cleaner hand. "Have any water?" she asks. "Croat blood is _foul_."

Very slowly, Jeff picks up the nearest water bottle and hands it to her. She chugs, swishes, and spits over the side of the escalator. One of the dogs below barks at her, and she barks back. Then she pours the water out so her escort can get a drink. "Much obliged," she says, handing the bottle back.

Then the little dog lunges forward and bites his ankle, enough to break the skin. Jeff yelps and tries to pull back. The little dog doesn't seem phased, but it lets go without tearing a chunk out of him. "Can't you--" he says, but can't think of anything to say.

"Sorry to skip introductions," the woman says, shrugging. "But they'd have gotten you if we didn't move fast." She turns to the others, Sharon with her useless gun and Jill on the floor with the kids hanging on to her. "You can call me Taffy. How would you like to never have to worry about the Croatoan virus ever again?"

* * *

_There's a half-hour window to turn a human newly contaminated with the Croatoan virus into something not susceptible to the virus; any of the monsters are authorized to do that. Beyond that, they are _supposed_ to take any uninfected humans to a reserve, _as humans_ , if feasible. Skinwalkers are getting a reputation for interpreting 'not feasible' as 'a human we think is adorable and want to keep'._

_The North Central Reserve occupies a former university campus. It is surrounded by a twenty-five-foot-wall of wire and cement and steel and brick, and there are coils of barbed wire at the top. The area outside is constantly patrolled, usually by Wendigoes. The only way in or out is through a heavily guarded gatehouse complex._

_The Reserve has dorms, common areas, an infirmary (with doctors and nurses), a well, a hydroelectric generator, a library, a school, a sports field, a swimming pool, a small herd of milk cows, and vegetable gardens. The humans choose a ten-person Representative Assembly to handle small problems and present their requests and concerns to the keepers. The humans got to decide on their own how to choose the assembly, and continually argue over who should vote, how to vote, how often to vote, who can run, whether you have to volunteer to run, and Mother knows what else. It keeps them busy and out of trouble._

_The Reserve holds over four hundred humans and counting. Many of the increases are from delivery of uninfected humans found elsewhere, but there are also live births, enough that some of the hunting parties were asked to look for diapers and baby clothes, and a special trip was made for infant vaccines. This year they have the highest birthrate of the five North American Reserves. (Last year the Southwestern Reserve was experimenting with Siren-assisted captive breeding. It tripled their birth rate, but also increased their homicide rate from negligible to higher than the birth rate. The experiment was terminated and the spokesperson to the humans was publicly decapitated and replaced, but things are still very tense.)_

_There are strict rules against worshipping Lucifer or demons, but anything else is acceptable (it's not like the angels are listening, and any pagan gods still around know when to tread lightly). Some still pray to the god of the angels. But some have started to pray to the Mother, even though she's not their mother. The reasoning seems to go that better someone else's mother who takes care of you, even if it's for her own purposes, then your own father who leaves you to be eaten by zombies._

_All healthy adults in the Reserve 'donate blood' every three months. Barring sudden freak accidents, no one ever dies in the infirmary; keepers wheel the dying away, and return empty-handed with confirmation of their passing._

_No one asks. Most people know. But the Reserve has an infirmary and a school and a hydroelectric generator, and there are Croatoans outside._


	3. Chapter 3

The new creature is structured much like a chelicerate arthropod, but she decided it needed both pincers and fangs. It has three tails: stinger, ovipositor, and one more. It has legs for walking, legs for clinging, and legs for jumping; an adult can jump ten times its body length. It is the perfect size to curve around the top and back of a human head, where the third tail has easy access to the spinal cord. It will be able to hook in and take control of voluntary movement.

It has a mouth with which it can eat anything organic. It needs relatively high sulfur intake to live. In addition to the 'normal' mouth, it has two extendable mouths with hooks and suckers on the end. After it latches on, it can stab a tongue-like structure beneath the skin and, assuming it has successfully located a vein or artery, filter the blood. Its preferred food is the Croatoan virus, but it also finds demon meatsuits very appetizing. About six months of steady feeding would leave the human body brain-damaged but virus-free. Of course, at least to start with, the hosts will probably be killed by other infected humans long before then.

It reproduces by parthenogenesis. It lays clutches of five to twenty eggs somewhere warm, wet, and sulfur-rich -- for example, inside a Croatoan-infected human.

Everything needs a weakness. On a whim, she makes it indifferent to salt but very sensitive to mercury.

She picks a city, stands in the middle, and changes every live scorpion within ten miles to her new creature.

She doesn't name it. She's going to let the humans do that.

* * *

They're peering out of cover when a _giant crab-thing_ leaps out of nowhere onto one of the croats and starts _humping its head_. The croat squawks, actually squawks, and flails ineffectively at the crab while the crab stabs it in the back of the neck with its tail or maybe a pointed tentacle. The other croats stare at it. One or two actually back up.

"What the fuck is that?" Dean snarls at Cas, hoping he's sober enough for a good answer.

Cas shakes his head. "I've never seen it."

"You're a lot of--"

"I mean it's _new_. This is something _new_."

By the time they get back to camp, Dean's been forced to decree that 'Croab' is marginally better than 'head-crab', because at least it doesn't sound sexually transmitted. They don't need Cas's groupies going for the medical supplies because they hear he's seen _head-crabs_.

And he'll have to look this gift horse in the mouth, because it probably has poison teeth, but still it's nice to have something preying on the croats, and it's the closest he's come to laughing in months.

* * *

Fallen bodies aren't uncommon, but movement puts everyone on the alert, and one of the party -- a high-strung guy whose name Cas hasn't bothered to learn because he probably won't be around long enough for it to matter -- lets off a shot before Risa smacks his gun down. It's not a live croat. It's half a dozen Croabs, only about the size of a man's hand, chowing down on a croat corpse.

"Babies," Risa says flatly. "Is it my imagination, or does it look like they broke _out_ of the ribcage?" No one disagrees, and Bob mutters something about chestbursters. "Keep your distance. We don't want those things getting a taste for human."

Croabs seem to prefer live croats, but also scavenge. Croabs jump and crawl. Bullets ricochet off Croabs unless you hit them right at the join of the exoskeleton, in which case the whole thing splatters all over everything within ten feet. Croabs have nasty-looking stingers, but no one's seen them in action. Croabs affect croat behavior, but there may or may not be any intent behind it (because really, anything would act different with a giant crab sitting on its head stabbing it in the neck, even with no mind control). They've found dead croats with no visible wound except a deep puncture in the back of the neck and deep, ugly hickeys on the throat. No one's dared do a real close inspection of a Croab, because they're probably full of virus -- they eat enough croats for it. It's been eight months since they first saw a Croab spring into the scene, and it's gotten so they hardly ever see croats without seeing some... passengers.

Cas still can't get past the _newness_ of them. For all they have to assume it's some plot of Lucifer's, it just doesn't seem likely. Everyone finds them horrifying but -- they go after croats, slow them down, probably kill them, and they ignore the uninfected. (A few years ago, he might have tried to believe they were made by his Father, to help. He's over that now.)

After the babies, they don't see any Croabs for the rest of the supply run until they're leaving the town. As they get into the hills, there's a place where they have a real good vantage of the interstate heading out of town. There's a line of croats shuffling down the highway, not quite single file, but closer than the _resistence_ usually is, never mind most croats. Kent gets out the binoculars. There's a Croab on every head.

Risa hisses. "Dean needs to know about this."

What she thinks Dean's going to do about it, Cas can't imagine.

He knows what _he's_ going to do about it. He's got a pill for that.


	4. Chapter 4

There's a pack of werewolves digging a trench alongside I-15. They have dynamite for the intersections.

Some vampires are driving a bulldozer near the US-Canada border.

Over fifty skinwalkers are making like surveyors along the remains on the highways of the Eastern Seaboard, with shapeshifters and a few rugaru and a lone Wendigo to do the heavy lifting.

Croab-bearing Croats are on the move, shuffling in relatively orderly groups out of the cities, along the roads, ignoring distractions.

In the half-flooded ruins of a bar in New Orleans, the Mother of All Monsters prepares two cocktails and a batch of onion rings, then sits at the bar. "Do you think it will work?" she asks.

Death accepts the onion rings. "Let's say I await the results with interest."

* * *

Lucifer is in the middle of draining demons when she drops in. His first lash of power... slides off. It wears the shell of a human woman, but inside... inside is something he hasn't seen in a very long time, not since he helped his brothers imprison her.

"Hello, Lucifer," she says, smiling faintly.

He drops the bloodless demon. "You were -- larger, the last time I saw you." 

"That was in my first incarnation, before you and your brothers imprisoned me," the woman answers. "Most of me is still in Purgatory. But my children needed me, so I came."

(And across the continent, werewolves and vampires and skinwalkers and shapeshifters and wraiths and kitsune and arachne and rugaru and dragons and a hundred other kinds willingly break their skin and shed their blood at their Mother's bidding.)

"What do you call yourself now?" Lucifer asks, the soul of courtesy.

"Eve."

"It hasn't been my chief concern, but it seems to me your children have been doing quite well. There's no one keeping them from living as they are meant to live. I've seen them hunting in packs -- you must be very proud."

(And across the continent, Croabs manipulate hands bearing knives, shards of glass, anything sharp across throats, and lay the bodies down to bleed into trenches and paths and roads.)

Eve's expression grows serious. "My children are hungry, Lucifer. They are hungry, they have been displaced, and they cannot spawn their own progeny. You say no one is stopping them from living as they are meant to live? They are meant to live on a world _with humans_."

(And it is actually just one trench, road, path, pattern.)

"You're _defending_ them? Them, His favorites, after he had you cast down and imprisoned?" Even as he says it, though, Lucifer is remembering that Tiamat was cast into Purgatory before humans had come to be. She'd rebelled because of the creation of _angels_.

"I do not begrudge you your quarrel with Heaven," Eve says. "You're angry. You were imprisoned a long time, and you never made anything but twisted demons you hate. You have reason to be angry. But I am asking you to strike directly for Heaven, and leave Earth for Earthly creatures."

Lucifer snarls. " _No_." He throws a blast of power in Eve's direction. It hits a barrier which trembles but holds.

Eve nods. "I wanted to ask." Then she lifts her hand to her mouth and uses her teeth to tear open a gash in the palm. It bleeds profusely as she lifts her hand above her head.

(It is the largest angel-banishing sigil ever drawn.)

"I may be alone," Lucifer hisses, "but you're diminished--"

"I know." She kneels and slaps her bleeding hand to the earth, then springs back to her feet to seize him by the throat--

(Across the continent, great bloody lines in the earth flare with light. Monsters jump back, and Croabs spring away from the corpses they were navigating. Humans watch the light in the distance, and wonder what it means. A bare handful of demons realize what it means, and make all haste to their father's side.)

Lucifer is not on Earth any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so, yeah, I'm using Eve to fix the End!verse. Sorry? What can I say, I hate downer endings.


End file.
